Chapter 17: The Shadow on the Throne
The silence left by the fall of princes was heavier than any grief. In its vacuum, two royal courts, a sea apart, moved to fill the void, one with the grim determination of victors, the other with the frantic scrabbling of the damned.
On Dragonstone, the Chamber of the Painted Table was lit with every candle they could find, a desperate attempt to ward off the chill that had nothing to do with the autumn air. Queen Rhaenyra, clad in black and red, sat at the head of the table, her face a pale, composed mask over a sea of sorrow. The death of Daemon had been a phantom limb, an ache where a vital part of her used to be. But she was the Queen. She would not falter now.
"It is done," she said, her voice clear and steady, addressing her council. "My husband's sacrifice has broken the back of the Usurper. Aemond is dead. Vhagar is gone. King's Landing is ripe for the taking."
"Then we must take it!" her son, Jacaerys, urged, his youthful face flushed with a mixture of grief for his stepfather and a burning desire for vengeance. "Now! We should fly at once. Syrax, Vermax, Tyraxes—we will descend upon the Red Keep and burn the Greens out of their nest before they can even comprehend their loss!"
"Fire and blood have cost this family enough, my prince," Lord Corlys Velaryon countered, his voice a low, cautious rumble. The Sea Snake looked older, his eyes holding the weary wisdom of a man who has buried too many children. "The city is leaderless. Their armies are ghosts. Their will is broken. A show of overwhelming force is all that is required. My fleet can blockade the Blackwater. We can close the port and surround the city with our new allies from the Riverlands. Let the usurper see the noose tighten. Let the people of the city force his hand. A siege is less costly than a storming, in both gold and lives."
Jace bristled at the counsel of caution. "Costly? They murdered my brother! They stole my mother's crown! There is no cost too high for justice!"
"There is always a cost, Jace," Rhaenyra said softly, her gaze distant. She looked at Lord Corlys. "Your wisdom is sound, my lord. We have bled enough. The people of King's Landing are my people. I will not have their homes turned to ash to root out a handful of traitors." She rose, her regal bearing undeniable. "We will blockade the city. We will send terms. Aegon will be given the chance to bend the knee and take the black. His mother and his grandfather will face trial for their treason. We will show them that their Queen is merciful, but that her justice is inescapable."
Her words settled the matter. It was a queen's decision, tempered by loss, aimed at peace, not annihilation. They would win the war, but they would win it with dignity. They believed, in that moment, that they were still in control of their own story.
In King's Landing, there was no talk of dignity. The Green Council was a gathering of ghosts in a dying house. The news of Aemond's death, confirmed by riders from a terrified Rosby, had been the final, fatal blow.
"He is gone," Queen Alicent whispered, her hands clutching the seven-pointed star at her neck so tightly her knuckles were white. "My son. My brave, foolish son. He is gone."
Otto Hightower, his face a grey mask of defeat, stared at the map on the table as if it were a page from a book he no longer knew how to read. "All of them. Gone. The army at Rook's Rest. The host at Bitterbridge. And now the Prince Regent. The last dragon that truly mattered."
"Vhagar was not just a dragon," Grand Maester Orwyle added, his voice trembling. "She was a symbol of our power, a link to the Conqueror himself. Without her, the people…"
"The people are starving!" Otto snapped, his voice cracking. "The Velaryon fleet has cut off the port completely. The price of bread has tripled. There are riots in Flea Bottom. And now… now they will hear that Aemond has fallen. They will know we are defenseless." He sank into his chair, the weight of his ambition finally crushing him. "I will send a raven to Rhaenyra. I will sue for peace."
"Peace?" Alicent looked at him, her eyes blazing with the last embers of her pride. "What peace is there to be had? She will demand my son's head! She will demand we renounce the true king and bow to her! I will not see Aegon in chains! I will not!"
"And what is your alternative, daughter?" Otto asked, his voice weary. "To sit here and wait for her dragons to burn us in our beds? To wait for the mob to tear down the gates and drag us into the street? We have lost. The game is over."
Larys Strong, who had been watching the exchange from the shadows, finally spoke. His voice was as calm and dry as dust. "The Hand is correct. The game, as we have been playing it, is indeed over." He shifted in his chair, the sound unnervingly loud in the tense silence. "But it seems our opponent may have misunderstood the rules as well."
"What are you babbling about, Clubfoot?" Alicent demanded.
"Daemon and Aemond are dead," Larys continued, ignoring the insult. "Two princes. Two of the most powerful dragons in the world. They annihilated each other. Who does that truly benefit? Rhaenyra has lost her husband and her most formidable general. We have lost our greatest warrior and our ultimate deterrent. Both sides have been catastrophically weakened at the highest level. It is… remarkably balanced."
The word hung in the air, chilling them all to the bone. Balanced. The same word the survivor from Bitterbridge had brought back.
Before anyone could respond, the bells began to ring. Not the cheerful peel of a festival or the solemn toll for a royal death. This was the frantic, discordant clang of the city's alarm bells, a sound of pure, unadulterated panic. A Kingsguard knight burst into the chamber, his white cloak stained with sweat, his face ashen.
"Your Graces! My lords! On the walls! The sky!" he stammered.
"What is it?" Otto demanded, rising to his feet. "Is it Rhaenyra's dragons? Has the assault begun?"
"No," the knight gasped, his eyes wide with a terror that went beyond the fear of battle. "Something else. Something… impossible. You must see."
Krosis-Krif rose from the Gods Eye like a new continent breaking the surface of the world. The water of the great lake cascaded from his back in vast, thunderous waterfalls. The Riverlords and their men, who had been camped on the shore, staring at the placid water where the duel had ended, were the first to see him. Their shouts of terror were swallowed by the sheer scale of the event.
He was transformed. He was larger, his colossal frame having swelled to a size that defied the constraints of biology. But the true change was in his hide. It was no longer the simple, hard black of obsidian. It was now the colour of the void itself, a deep, non-reflective blackness that seemed to drink the light. And within it, faint, shifting nebulae of colour swirled—the emerald-bronze of Vhagar, the blood-red of Caraxes, the pale gold of Rhaenys's memories—as if his very skin contained a captured universe. A low, internal light, like starlight seen through smoke, glowed from the seams between his plates. He was not a creature of flesh and blood anymore. He was a walking piece of the cosmos, a god clad in the skin of night.
He took to the air, not with the frantic beating of a lesser dragon, but with a slow, majestic push that seemed to bend gravity to his will. He did not fly; he ascended. He moved south-east, his destination King's Landing. His shadow fell over the Crownlands, a moving eclipse that sent herds of livestock scattering and made villagers fall to their faces in prayer. The news of his coming, the true form of the shadow that had haunted the war, spread before him, a wave of terror that outpaced any raven.
He arrived at King's Landing not as an attacker, but as an inevitability. The million inhabitants of the city looked up and saw the sky being erased. He was a storm cloud given life, a living mountain range that blotted out the sun, plunging the entire city into a deep, unnatural twilight. The panic in the streets was absolute, a tidal wave of human terror that was a delicious appetizer to his senses.
He did not land inside the walls. He flew directly to the Hill of Rhaenys, the great, charred ruin where the Dragonpit had once stood as a monument to the taming of dragons. With a sound of grinding, protesting earth, he landed. His colossal weight, the weight of a being who had consumed armies, fleets, and the very souls of the last great dragons, crushed the ruins completely. The great dome, a symbol of Targaryen power, became nothing more than a dust-choked crater beneath his foot. He coiled his immense form upon the hill, his head held high above the city, a new, dark mountain that now dominated its skyline. He had replaced their legacy with his own presence.
And then, he spoke.
It was not a roar that shook the buildings. It was a voice that bloomed in the center of every mind in the city, from the highest lord in his tower to the lowest beggar in Flea Bottom. It was a voice of impossible age and infinite, cold power. Every man, woman, and child heard it at once, an intimate whisper from a god.
"PEOPLE OF THIS CITY. YOUR AGE OF FIRE AND BLOOD IS OVER."
The voice was calm, devoid of anger or passion. It was a simple statement of fact, which made it all the more terrifying. On the battlements, soldiers dropped their spears. In the Sept of Baelor, septons fell silent mid-prayer. In the Red Keep, the Green Council stared at each other in blank, uncomprehending horror.
"YOUR KINGS AND QUEENS ARE BROKEN THINGS. YOUR BANNERS ARE ASH. YOUR SQUABBLES ARE TEDIOUS, AND THEIR NOISE HAS DISTURBED MY SLUMBER."
In her chambers, Queen Helaena, who had been whispering to her dead children, suddenly went silent, her eyes focusing for the first time in weeks as she, too, heard the voice in her head. In his, King Aegon II, passed out in a drunken stupor, stirred and whimpered, the words piercing even his alcoholic fog.
"THERE IS A NEW POWER. THERE IS A NEW WILL. THERE IS A NEW GOD."
Krosis-Krif looked down upon the city that was now his. He could feel the million points of consciousness, the million sparks of terror, all focused on him. It was the greatest feast he had ever known, a banquet of pure, unadulterated awe. He had transcended the role of parasite. He was no longer feeding on the war; he was consuming the peace that followed.
He let the silence hang for a moment, letting the weight of his presence and his words crush their spirits completely. Then, he delivered his final, simple command to the silenced city, to the court on Dragonstone who could feel the psychic shockwave even from across the bay, to the entire world.
"KNEEL… OR BE ERASED."
Silence. The Red Keep was silent. The city was silent. The world, it seemed, was silent. An age had ended, not with a roar of triumph or a cry of defiance, but with the quiet, collective intake of breath of a world that had just met its new and terrible master. The shadow had taken the throne.